


Poem For My Love

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [124]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, M/M, Misery, Reader-Insert, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:34:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25562173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: When Loki catches a summer cold, you do your best to take care of him.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [124]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 10
Kudos: 141





	Poem For My Love

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is another sick!fic, but no, this is not meant to be a COVID fic. It’s just a cold! I’m keeping the outside pandemic out of your cozy spaces! The title of this story comes from the same poem that you read to Loki at the end of the story: [Poem for My Love, by June Jordan](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49218/poem-for-my-love).

No one would have expected this to happen to Loki but then he wasn’t typically in the habit of doing what people expected. A summer cold—congestion, achiness, sore throat, general misery—had absolutely knocked him on his ass. Secretly, you did sort of want to giggle at that: the idea that a human disease could hit him so hard felt strange and nonsensical, but you knew better than to ever let him know what you thought. Anyway, seeing him sick wasn’t really a laughing matter.

He was grumpy. Worse than usual. On a normal day, he could be a little persnickety, a little exacting, but he always seemed to temper that by looking at you with that adoring gaze of his. These last few days, he’d been downright irascible, snapping and growling at the slightest provocation. And it didn’t even have to come from you. One partly-cloudy afternoon, he lost patience with the irregular pattern of light and darkness as the clouds moved across the sun, and slammed his book shut so he could sit there glowering at the window. The next night, you heard him cursing under his breath only to discover that he was angry about the fact that his sock had gotten all twisted around his foot. When he began to sniffle, your heart broke for him. His voice grew ever more congested and nasal. He spent the night coughing and trying in vain to fall asleep. After a few days, it was undeniable:

Loki was sick.

You showered him in as much love and attention as he would allow. You rubbed his shoulders and kissed his forehead and caressed his face. At night, when you lay beside him, you reached up to gently rub the bones of his face, trying to soothe the pressure that surely filled his sinuses. If you spent too long treating him too gently, he always withdrew, like he didn’t want you to know that he needed you. So you were careful to walk the line between too much and not enough, and you were happy to do it.

Now, you weren’t a doctor. You certainly weren’t an Asgardian doctor. You barely had any idea how to treat your own illnesses, let alone whether Loki’s body would benefit from the same treatment. But you made him cups of tea with just a little too much honey, and he drank them gratefully, or at least without a fuss. You pulled out your grandmother’s old recipe box and made a valiant attempt at her chicken noodle soup. Loki knew enough about the human world to look skeptically at the pot when he came to see what you were cooking, but it was what you’d made for dinner, so he ate it without complaint. 

This whole thing raised so many questions in you. How did they treat illnesses in Asgard? Did they have an entire staff of healers waiting at the ready in case one of the royal family took ill? Did they rely more on magic or on science? Or both? Were there any miracle-herbs or plants that might possibly have some kind of Earthly analogue? Could you offer him human medication and expect it to have the same kind of effect on him? Would he even _take_ human medication? Sometimes he accepted a painkiller for a headache, and it seemed to help, but would a decongestant do the same thing? These questions burned at the corners of your mind, renewing your curiosity about Loki’s life before Earth, but you knew better than to ask him. For right now, at least. He was generally pretty careful about how he spoke to you, even now that he was unwell, but you didn’t want to rub it in his face that you knew he was sick.

Days went by. His cold got worse. It seemed like he stopped sleeping altogether. When he laid down with you, even propped up on as many spare pillows as you could find, coughing wracked his body. You took out your old humidifier and ran it full-blast in the bedroom, and then moved it to the living room when he stopped coming to bed. He’d come into the bedroom with you and tuck you into bed, but then he’d duck back out again and sit on the couch all night. Sitting upright was apparently the only position that allowed him to even doze. You had spent so many nights sleeping alone in your bed, but now that you’d had a taste of sleeping next to Loki, it felt so lonely. 

At your worried behest, he’d begun to take more showers, and hotter showers. He could close himself in the bathroom and let the steam fill the tiny room, and it seemed to help. You knew that he was not a fan of the lava-like showers that you adored, but the hot water also helped soothe some of the pain in his muscles from sleeping sitting up. You offered him more massages than ever, and often, he accepted. When he didn’t, when he shrugged out from under your hands, he always looked at you with a kind of sadness in his eyes, like he was apologizing. You allowed yourself to shout at him once—only once—and told him that, dammit, you knew he wasn’t feeling well and he was just going to have to let you take care of him because god knows he was constantly taking care of _you_. Maybe you stamped your foot a little, and then immediately felt childish for doing so, but something in your words or your body must have convinced him, because he stopped denying himself your touch.

Slowly, he began to recover. The cough lingered, but it stopped sounding quite so deep. He started joining you in bed—not for entire nights, but he’d lie down with you for a while before he had to get up again. His mood lifted, a little, seemingly just enough to let him begin to take pleasure in the attention you were still giving him. Tonight, you were sitting on the couch and his head was in your lap. It was rather a new position for you: you were far more used to being the one lying on him, but you liked it. You had a book propped up on the arm of the couch and held it with one hand while you worked the other gently through his hair. You paid special attention to his scalp, rubbing your fingers in circles in order to ease some of the tension there. Every once in a while, he’d give a long sigh, one filled with relief and gratitude, and he’d squeeze your knee with his hand.

Neither of you spoke. You didn’t need to. He didn’t want to. You said all that you needed to say with your fingers in his hair, and he said all that he could with his hand on your knee. The night was quiet. As you skimmed through the pages of your book, here and there a line or an entire poem would catch your attention and make you pause. Sometimes you’d read it to him, keeping your voice low so as not to disturb the silence. He didn’t seem to mind. Certainly he’d done the same for you countless nights before.

You drew in a slow breath of the love and peace that surrounded you and felt your mouth curl into a smile. You pressed your whole hand against his forehead and began to read:

_I am amazed by peace  
It is this possibility of you  
asleep  
and breathing in the quiet air._


End file.
